NORTHERN IRELAND'S struggling construction sector has experienced its sharpest slowdown in 12 years during the past three months, leading industry professionals have confirmed.

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) says its members in the North have reported a serious decline in workloads across all sectors of the construction industry.

According to a new survey carried out by the RICS in Northern Ireland, construction workloads fell in the second quarter of 2008 at their fastest rate since the start of 1996. The RICS says its research shows that the North experienced the biggest drop in construction workloads in the second quarter compared to all other regions in the UK.

It claims workloads in the private housing sector have fallen dramatically, but public non-housing workloads and private commercial workloads have also slowed significantly. According to the survey, private industrial workloads have fallen by the sharpest rate since the second quarter of 2002.

John Davidson, RICS Northern Ireland construction spokesman, said the fact that housebuilding in the North had virtually ground to a halt was one of the key reasons for the construction industry's difficulties.

"The private housing sector experienced a major slowdown across the UK, but the slowdown in Northern Ireland was more pronounced than elsewhere," he said.

"Across the UK, the lack of availability of debt finance is taking its toll on developers, in addition to rising costs for materials such as steel and copper."

The RICS said its members in the North warned that profit expectations had fallen to their lowest levels in years and "workload expectations" were at their lowest levels in seven years.